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Meanwhile, I've found a notetaker that I really like. Rightnote, I posted about it before long ago. This tool is a labor of love. If you like oneNote, but fear being locked in its proprietary format, rightnote is the best replacement. Portable. Live search is excellent. It can have different note types, spreadsheets and code. The author is very responsive and releases new versions fast. Probably the best notetaker I know. Its treatment of tags is fantastic. And it can link external files and treat them as notes, that is, index them. It's called virtual notes. This is good for collaborating with people who don't use rightnote. Oh, and it clips snippets with their url. It has displaced cintanotes for me.

TreeDbNotes does have a real forum, RightNote is more anonymous, so it might be nice to contact the developer. On the other hand TreeDbnotes seems to be a bit dismissive at times (e.g. on the "free" being not free issue).

Anyway, functionally both programs look quite nice, (Keynote-NF lags on look for sure) I'm sure there are a dozen major differences -- so what are they ?

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On a quick glance, the creation of a flexible table in RightNote is very impressive. Not sure yet what type of object this table is, anyone know ? Is such a feature possible in InfoQube ? You just smack dab an n x n rows and columns and start typing data ! And then you adjust the sizes. Now if that makes an SQL data base that would be especially kewl, but even simply internal to the note taker ... impressive. Have you seen that elsewhere ? (e.g. MyBase ?)

Boy, this is bringing back memories of that huge roundup...Currently, I am most impressed by RightNote. I can't put my finger on it, but it just seems to be awesome in every nook and cranny that I look. TreeDBNotes is not one I've played around with much, and I can tell it's as powerful as a traditional notetaker comes, but there are some things I don't quite like about it compared to RightNote (the searching comes to mind). Mybase has lost favor with me. It feels old, and development is slow, but it is still relatively powerful in specific areas. In other words, it may do a couple of things that other programs can't do, and that may be dealbreakers for some people. InfoQube is still the most powerful of the bunch, but it falls short on the UI front compared to the others. The UI of RightNote is the best I've seen in a notetaker.

OK, I'm understanding something better now. What is so unique about InfoQube is that the outlining is the primary feature. All of these things (except treesheets) can be considered hierarchy style, 2-pane outliners or notetakers. Most of these, including RightNote, organize your note titles in an OUTLINE on the side, but the main content is the guts of that note. InfoQube does this very differently. For InfoQube, the main content is the OUTLINE, and the stuff that goes inside each note is not as prominent (it would be the HTML pane). In a sense, this makes InfoQube better because it has supercharged features for the outline part, while still retaining what most programs can do with the insides of the note. For Rightnote, the outline is only the note titles, and there isn't much more you can do to it other than adding icons and moving it around the hierarchy. In InfoQube, this outline has very powerful features, including multiple fields, and all sorts of relationships you can create about them. That's why Armando always says he can store just about everything he needs to inside IQ. It's very flexible with that outliner+html pane. This is why I say IQ is the future.In this screenshot, you can see Rightnote's traditional layout. The green rectangle is highlighting the outline part where the note hierarchy is created. This is very standard stuff. Obviously, this is not where most of the program's power comes from. The main part is the inside of each note, where the content is with all the great table features, and editing controls:

Now, pay attention to InfoQube. The outline part that I indicated for above, is now a super duper deluxe outline. You can add fields to it, checkboxes, automatic dates, pretty much whatever you want. The power of InfoQube is here. That's what makes it different:

So in my opinion, Infoqube has the most flexible and attractive set of options for general purpose notetaking (especially if you need to commit to one for a while), Rightnote has the UI elements absolutely nailed down. We need a merger!!

OK, I'm understanding something better now. What is so unique about InfoQube is that the outlining is the primary feature. All of these things (except treesheets) can be considered hierarchy style, 2-pane outliners or notetakers. Most of these, including RightNote, organize your note titles in an OUTLINE on the side, but the main content is the guts of that note. InfoQube does this very differently. For InfoQube, the main content is the OUTLINE, and the stuff that goes inside each note is not as prominent (it would be the HTML pane).

Usually the terminology used to differentiate these different systems is : one-pane, two-panes and hybrid. See the wikipedia article on outliners. But there can be also 3 panes outliners, and maybe others...

In any case there's this old post by Pierre where he describes all these different systems

In fact, InfoQube is pretty hybrid as you can use it as a 2 panes or a 1 pane, depending on your needs. I personally use it more a one pane outliner, but some users use the outline purely for structure and the HTML pane ("rich text" editor) for content -- that is also perfectly possible. I tend to use the HTML/"rich text" pane for external sources/web-clipping, and sometimes when I need complex formatting (tables, etc.); but I'm mostly working directly in the outline.

As Wikipedia correctly states, each system has its drawbacks and so going hybrid allows one to get the best of both world (depending on the task at hand).

There are not that many hybrid solutions out there. Of the top of my head : Ecco can be quite hybrid with an addon, then there's OmniOutliner for Mac and MyInfo. Probably others like MaxThink or org-mode, which are hard to classify. Anyway...

Logged

"I suppose it can be said that I'm an absent-minded driver. It's true that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it."Glenn Gould

Yes Armando, thanks for clarifying that. I also use InfoQube primarily as a one-pane setup. But the only reason I can do that is because InfoQube's outliner area is so flexible and powerful. You can have all sorts of fields and relationships going on without even going to a second pane. And, yes, the second is available if you need it, but like yourself, the better I get with IQ, the less I need the second pane.I remember in the beginning I used the HTML pane a lot, but that outliner is just too powerful to avoid. Actually, several times I've gone back and moved information from the HTML pane into a grid once I realized that I can modify the grid with special fields and other ideas I came up with. I really like the idea of having it all in the grid.

I found a tool that is almost identical to rightnote: mynoteskeeper. Who copies who, is up in the air, but I find this:"We are a privately owned software provider located in beautiful Shenzhen, Guangdong China" an indicator that bauerapps was first.

There are some minor differences. No xls note type on mynoteskeeper; less configuration options, but also smaller exe size.

PIMs have been one my fancied applications for at least 10 years now. Over the years I have moved from ECCO to KeyNote and then to Infoselect. I did also try Zoot for a while, and used to love its Zooter and auto-categorizing. Later I moved to a combination of OneNote and CintaNotes. Although I have never been quite happy with OneNote, I have not found a good replacement yet. CintaNotes is good for what it does.

PIMs are probably one of those products that a lot of moderate and power users may use. In their variety, I find this class of applications very similar to ToDo List applications. There are a multitude of products out there, each with its own strengths and quirks. Every few months a lot of new products show up with a lot of promise but quickly languish for lack of development.

Based on your posts and opinions, I tried out RighNote, and it definitely looks good.

Every time I see a new review, I eagerly look up the application, but I almost always come down disappointed. A few features I look for are:

Auto categorizing of incoming content â€“ Zoot was wonderful with this

Search as you type (live search) â€“ InfoSelect did a great job with search filtering

Sync across multiple devices â€“ have an online option.

Quick and snappy, with a small footprint

I guess Aram (SuperboyAC) had these listed in his Notetaking Software roundup.

Like many of you, a good PIM that works for me will remain a distant dream, quite like that Indian parable of a mongoose with half a golden coat.